Thursday, February 21, 2013

Believing in Darwin

The following comments were prepard for my school's first Darwin Day symposium, February
21, 2013. I was asked to revise them, but declined to do so. I run the piece here largely as written.

As
far as I can tell, all human beings have to grapple with two internal
struggles. The first is a struggle to understand the world as it is. The second
is a struggle to make sense of the gap between the world as it is and the world
as we would like it to be. People in different times and places have dealt with
that second struggle in varying ways. Sometimes, it’s been a matter of trying
to accommodate with the world as it is – which often involves a belief that if
we actually understand the world better, we will be able to come to terms with
it more effectively. Other times, it’s been a matter of trying to change the
world and bringing it closer to the ideals we imagine. This notion of changing
the world is the one we pledge allegiance to here at Fieldston. It is literally
our mission.

But
21st century Fieldstonites aren’t the only people who have had this
mission. Actually, the world in which Charles Darwin came of age – the world of
19th century Great Britain – was also a time when people believed
they could change the world, a time when people spoke confidently of “progress”
with a capital P. The reasons for this confidence were obvious: the railroad
and telegraph were conquering time and space; factories were mass-producing
goods in ways that promised to abolish scarcity (and, with it, slavery,
something Britain did decades before the United States). The source of this
technological mastery was modern science, which unlocked the secrets of steam,
and electricity, and iron, allowing human beings to manipulate them toward
desired ends.

This
was the context in which The Origin of
Species was published in 1859, a world in which Darwin was a product of knowledge as much as he was a
producer of knowledge. In
constructing a fact-based story about rocks and birds with great explanatory
power, Darwin has helped a great many people understand the world as it is.

But
in offering an explanation of the world as it is, Darwin created manifold
problems for those trying to understand the gap between this world and the one
we wish it to be. As many of us know, Darwin himself was deeply troubled by the
religious implications of his work, so much so that he sat on his findings for
many years until it became clear the world was going to learn what he had
discovered anyway. But I am here to tell you that Darwin’s work remains a
problem for a great many more people than those who happen to believe the world
was created by God in seven 24-hour days. In the late 19th century,
some people took Darwin’s ideas – over Darwin’s own objections – and used them
to explain the fate of the poor and weak as a function of their own
inferiority, a concept that has come to be known as Social Darwinism. Social
Darwinists argued that phenomena like poverty were explained by maladaptive
genes that made some people unable to function, much less compete, in modern
society. Some of the people who are today regarded as heroes of the modern
contraception movement sincerely believed that we’d better off if people of
some races and ethnicities were never born.

We
know better. Or, I should say, we “know” better. Today the tales we tell based
on Darwin’s facts are harnessed for the use of liberal rather than conservative
ends. Instead of focusing on the grim determinism of genetic inheritance, we
prefer to dwell on the sunny side of environmental adaptation. We speak of
“plasticity” and “learned behavior.” We like to think there’s an affinity
between the sustainability language ecological diversity of and the progressive
education language of multicultural diversity. We tend not to dwell on the
random components of evolution, because we want to believe that that we are
agents, if not masters, of our own futures. So we speak of our identities as
chosen, and refuse to accept the proposition that biology is destiny.

I’m
not saying any of this is wrong. I am saying that the very logic of the
Darwinian evolution specifically, and the scientific enterprise generally,
rests on the interpretation of evidence that is always contingent. As I understand it, the
paradigmatic scientific proposition goes like this: “We used to think x; now we know y.” The facts don’t necessarily change – new ones may appear – but
what we interpret those facts to mean
is subject to ongoing revision. Newtonian of laws of gravity were fixed, until
Einstein came along and they weren’t. Evolution tells us that things change
gradually – until, as the fossil record shows, something cataclysmic happens
and they don’t. What you, know is really a matter of what you believe at any
given time.

Let
me tell you some of the things I believe at this time:

I
believe, based on an ample historical of sea and air travel, that the earth is,
for all practical purposes, round.

I
believe, based on written authority I trust and what Paul Church has told me,
that this earth is billions and billions of years old.

I
believe, based on first-hand evidence, that there is no direct correlation
between gender and intellectual capacity.

I
believe, largely because I want to and because I can’t keep the studies
straight, that coffee and chocolate won’t kill me.

I
believe, at least in part because I’m her father, that my daughter is adorable.

I
believe, because I’m not aware of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, that
there really is an intelligent design that can explain evolution and all the
rest, and that Jesus Christ has something to do with it.

I
myself have not tested any of these beliefs scientifically.
I happen to spend my time chasing other truths. But I’m not aware that any of
these assertions are demonstrably scientifically false.
(Of course they’re not
scientifically true, either, because they they don’t rest on positivistic,
falsifiable propositions.)
I invite you to share
my beliefs. But I don’t take for granted that you will embrace all of them.
Actually, I’m a little awed by how much I don’t know.

So
that’s what I believe. What do you
believe? And how strong is your
faith?

About King's Survey

King's Survey is an imaginary high school history class taught by Abraham King, a.k.a. "Mr. K." Though the posts proceed in a loosely chronological fashion, you can drop in on the conversation any time. For more background on this series, see my other site, Conversing History. The opening chapter of "Kings Survey" is directly below.

“The Greatest Catholic Poet of Our Time . . . Is a Guy from the JerseyShore? Yup,” in The Best Catholic Writing 2007, edited by Jim Manney (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2007)

“I’s a Man Now: Gender and African-American Men,” in Divided Houses:Gender and the Civil War, edited by Nina Silber and Catherine Clinton (Oxford University Press, 1992).

THE COMPLETE MARIA CHRONICLES, 2009-2010

Most writing in the vast discourse about American education is analytic and/or prescriptive: It tells. Little of that writing is actually done by active classroom teachers. The Maria Chronicles, like the Felix Chronicles that preceded them (see directly below), takes a different approach: They show. These (very) short stories of moments in the life of the fictional Maria Bradstreet, who teaches U.S. history at Hudson High School, located somewhere in metropolitan New York, dramatize the issues, ironies, and realities of a life in schools. I hope you find them entertaining. And, just maybe, useful, whether you’re a teacher or not.–Jim Cullen